
I also shot a couple of still-lifes, reflected self portraits and other items along the way. Click any of the pictures below to see them bigger (clicking into the post or post title first, if that doesn’t work).



In isolation for months now, running out of things to turn my lens on so more self-portraits documenting the transformation in personal grooming I’ve been undergoing…
Had great fun (and not a little work) this weekend hosting a Pop-up Gallery show of my photographs and my mother’s paintings at Contra Studios in Chelsea. the pivot of the show was a set of 4 images you can see if you look quickly in the video (around the 20-second mark): a snowy photo of mine and my mother’s painting of it and a painting my mother did of some marsh grass in New Jersey and a photograph I took without knowing about hers, which nevertheless has a striking resemblance.
Also in attendance was a large group of my former classmates from PS 198’s class of 1968. I brought our middle school yearbooks, our class photo and set up a screen running a continuous loop of images I shot for the yearbooks back then, our 50th reunion get-together and some random shots around New York in those days. Most of the pictures here are of these friends and were shot by Peter Calvert, a professional artist and/or his wife Suzanne who is a stained glass artist – many thanks Peter and Suzanne!
I also set up an iMac to run loops of slide shows of my street photography set to music which you can see very briefly right at the end of the video (and hear in the background).
Also appearing, a surprise visit from my workshop friend Markus John from Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb‘s Finding Your Vision workshop last Spring, in NY on a brief trip from Germany.
(Click any picture to see them all enlarged and a few captions.)
I’d also like to thank numerous other friends who stopped by: Frank Burrows, Joe Silver, Gary Shoemaker and Kathleen Chan, Laura Tietjen and Steve Moore, Wayne Parsons and others and my mothers friends from her painting class, her quilting group and her neighbors who were very gracious in their appraisal of the show.
Important news! The gallery show previously announced has moved! We’ll still be opening on Friday evening (25-Oct-2019) at 6:30 pm and on Saturday the 26th from 11:00 to 5:00 but the new location is:
Contra Studios
122 West 26th Street, 7th floor
New York, NY 10001
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be participating in a pop-up gallery show next month. On the evening of Friday, October 25th and during the day on Saturday, the 26th you can see some of my work at Mother & Son an exhibition of my mother’s paintings (S F Stern) with my photographs.
Checking out the gallery space where my pop-up show will be Friday, October 25th and 26th.
Another of my father’s Kodachrome slides in New York (read about the history of these here). This one was taken in Central Park between 1962 and ’64. That’s me coming down the hill on the sled behind what is now called the Diana Ross Playground (and was just the playground when I was little).
Here’s me with my first digital camera, a Kodak 2MP point and shoot with about a 3x zoom that cost about $700 in 1999 dollars. Since I was shooting jpegs and they weren’t very good, I played around in Photoshop using artistic filters to see what I could get. Not something I’d be terribly likely to do today.
Well, I’m out of images again and about to travel down South for a few days. So just to keep the pot boiling I’m going way back into the archives for the next few days with some old shots, some on film and others from my earliest digital days. Here’s me chopping cord wood in Colorado circa 1982, with hair.
Been laid up with a cold all week (as have all my family) and it’s too cold to go outside anyway so no new pictures.
However, in other news, some of you may remember when my picture of the Carl Schurz statue on Morningside Heights was used in a German tribute to him, reported earlier in these pages.
Now, I’m happy to report, especially to French and German readers, that it will appear (for a few seconds) in a television documentary, “Der Traum von der Neuen Welt” or “Le rêve du nouveau monde,” this April 22 at 20:15 (Central European Time, UTC+1) on ARTE (current plan – it could change).
Let me know how it looks!
Just in time for the new year! One of my pictures (you saw it here first as Steamy Window!) will be used as the sleeve for a soon to be released single by the English pop band, The Baffled Kings (perfect for Epiphany)!
The single drops January 8th – I’ll post a link when it’s available on Alternative England Records.
We had a delightful lunch in nearby Hammondsport and did not terribly bore my wife and daughter with talk of photography.
Looking in the mirror one day, in this particular afternoon light, I was fascinated to see all the crooks and crags, wrinkles, lines and pores that now define my face. I’m no spring chicken any more.
Recently someone posted a whole set of portraits they’d shot using a square ring light to create square catch lights in their subjects’ eyes. I thought they looked rather odd and unnatural. But here I am with square catch lights in my eyes from an illuminated hotel room mirror.